Computers are in wide use in a variety of vehicles. They are widely used in all types of aircraft and spacecraft for navigation and they are also in wide use for navigation in naval craft. Computers are also widely used in aircraft and spacecraft for the planning of a variety of missions. Computers are in use in military aircraft to assist in delivering various types of ammunition and ordnance to military objectives. In addition, computers assist the crew of military aircraft in managing the firing or releasing the stores of ordnance on the aircraft.
The many uses for computers on vehicles has created a very real problem in terms of space for additional computer capacity. Also, the addition of extra computer capacity usually means that the structure of the vehicle must be altered and that the existing computer may also have to be altered or re-configured.
Many vehicles are designed for a wide variety of uses or missions. Some of these missions may require a large amount of computer capacity and yet other missions may require very little computer capacity. In addition, some vehicle missions may be very specialized and require special data and specialized processing capabilities that are ordinarily not needed on the vehicle. The normal presence of such special data and processing capabilities on the vehicle is unnecessary and represents an added expense. An example of such a specialized need are various military aircraft training missions such as simulated air combat.
This vehicle computer system and method invention overcomes these problems associated with prior vehicle computers and their methods of use. With this invention it is possible to tailor the computational capability of a vehicle to suit a particular vehicle mission without altering the vehicle structure or adding to the permanent vehicle computer. This allows the vehicle to have an increased computational capability, but at a very low cost. The invention also allows the off-loading of a portion of the vehicle computer capability for modification, analysis and servicing purposes.